The peoples Alternative Political Movement (TPAP-M) and her allies convened an emergency public meeting of the #ResistHardship Coordination Committee on Thursday, 31st March, 2022.
The emergency public meeting was prompted by calls from TPAP-M members and allies for an urgent session to deliberate on and decide on steps to take in the face of the deteriorating crisis of insecurity and debilitating conditions of living of the working people and toiling masses of the country.
Convened, in the immediate aftermath of the senseless attack by rampaging armed groups on the Abuja – Kano Train and Railway line, in which several lives were lost (including two of our comrades – the TUC General Secretary, and the Chairman of Kwara State chapter of the TUC); scores sustained varying degrees of injuries; and dozens more have remained unaccounted for since the dastardly attack; observed and resolved as follows: OBSERVATIONS:
A. The public meeting paid glowing tributes to our departed comrades, commiserated with their immediate families, and condoled with TUC, our Movement (TPAP-M), the wider Mass labour movement, and Nigerian workers. The public meeting further observed a minute of silence in memory of our comrades, and Nigerians who have lost their lives to intensifying insecurity in the country;
B. The public meeting observed that the security situation has deteriorated, and continues to rapidly deteriorate to such an extent that the state of insecurity in the country has transitioned from being endemic, to becoming pandemic;
C. The public meeting noted various groups of armed criminal gangs, now operate with impunity across the country in the face of a governance vacuum created by a hopelessly incompetent government, regime and ruinous ruling class;
D. The impunity with which Bandits in Government and Vagabonds in Power trample on the rights of citizens, and fail to provide for the security and wellbeing of the people, is now matched and rivalled by the brazenness of armed bandits and other armed criminal gangs, as they inflict death, harm, injury and sorrow on hapless citizens;
E. From the foregoing brazenness of armed bandits and other armed criminal gangs, the only conclusion that is left to be drawn is that neither the Nigerian state and current government,
nor the Nigerian Ruling Class is any longer able, willing or capable of securing the lives and properties of citizens and working peoples, or of provisioning their basic needs and wellbeing. The government, the state, and the ruling class have failed, and their failure has become an existential threat to the average Nigerian citizen, and the working peoples and toiling masses of the country;
F. Additionally, just as the ruling class is mired in convoluted crisis, so is the Nigerian left threatened by unconscionable and self serving sectarianism, that continues to hamper progress in our collective struggle for National Liberation and Social Emancipation, and blocking our path to realising the struggle for the Socialist transformation of our country. This sectarianism, which remains ingrained in certain quarters of the left, very often manifest in deliberate acts of sabotage of collective efforts, and mir our movement in unnecessary distractions;
RESOLUTIONS:
1. The public meeting called on the working peoples and toiling masses of Nigeria, in the face of the failure of the state and the ruling class to secure their lives and properties to take their destiny into their own hands and establish and put in place community based, Collective Self Defense Committees of Residents in the various communities and urban neighbourhoods across the country. These Community And Neighbourhood Self Defense Committees should be made up of residents of the various communities and urban neighbourhood of the country. We reiterate that these self defense committees should be constituted on the basis of residency,
and should be led by acknowledged representatives of the working people in both the formal and informal sectors resident in those locations;
2. We call for these Community and Neighbourhood Self Defense Committees to link up across
Local Government Areas, and Across States, establishing Local Council and State level Coordination mechanisms;
3. We equally call on our people to establish local #ResistHardShip Committees across communities and Urban Neighbourhoods across the country, with these committees similarly linking up, across communities and Urban neighbourhoods as well;
4. We call on the Community and Neighbourhoods Self Defense Committees, as well as the local #ResistHatdship Committees across communities and Urban neighbourhoods to link up with the State Level and National #ResistHardship Coordinating Committees for ease of Coordination of our collective efforts and self initiatives to secure our lives and properties, and to the general
Resist Hardship being visited upon us across the country by this incompetent, inhumane and treasury looting Ruling Class;
5. We call on all our long suffering working peoples, buffeted by a pandemic insecurity, and unbearable hardships to put pressure on the leaders of organised workers in the NLC and TUC to call a general strike on the state of insecurity in the country and the parlous state of the economy;
6. We urge all the organisations of the working peoples and toiling masses, and in particular, left organisations to eschew and actively combat sectarianism in our midst, and to work towards achieving effective Unity of Purpose, and Unity In Action in our common struggle to liberate our country from the clutches of imperialism and emancipate ourselves from the death grip of capitalist exploitation and oppression;
7. Noting the need to critically study and come to a deeper understanding of the evolving nature of insecurity, and changing character of armed criminality in our country, TPAP-M shall undertake a comprehensive study of this evolving phenomena;
CONCLUSION:
With deepening governance vacuum, engendered by the intractable failure of regime and the ruinous ruling class; it has become very imperative that the working peoples and toiling masses
must redouble our collective efforts at organising a viable Political Alternative to the ruling class, to contend for political power in the country.
Given, this is a year to be dominated by political organising towards the 2023 general elections,
the working peoples and toiling masses of our country cannot afford to be neutral or to be onlookers in the unfolding processes.
Towards this end, and to give concrete form to the efforts which began with The Peoples Alternative Political Summit, convened by left formations in March, 2021, and which gave birth to our movement – The Peoples Alternative Political Movement (TPAP-M); and which have culminated in the Workers Political Conferences organised by both NLC and TUC in March of this year (2022); the Mass Political Movement in our country, must now close ranks in the coming days, and enable the emergence of a Workers and Working Peoples Electoral Alliance to contend with the political parties of the discredited and failed ruling class in the 2023 general elections, and beyond.
As it is obvious that the ruling class is incapable of resolving the crisis of insecurity pandemic and an economy in complete meltdown; it has become incumbent on the working peoples and toiling masses of our country, to take on the historical task of vigorously contending for, and eventually taking and wielding political power in the collective interest of the working class and her allies.
Signed:
Prof. Omotoye Olorode
Comrade Jaye Gaskia
